Memoirs of a Revolutionist · Part IV · Chapter 4 8 (1/2)

VIII

The next year, early in the spring, I made my first journey to Western Europe. In crossing the Russian frontier, I experienced what every Russian feels on leaving his mother country. So long as the train runs on Russian ground, through the thinly populated northwestern provinces, one has the feeling of crossing a desert. Hundreds of miles are covered with low growths which hardly deserve the name of forests. Here and there the eye discovers a small, miserably poor village buried in the snow, or an impracticable, muddy, narrow, and winding village road. Then everything⁠—scenery and surroundings⁠—changes all of a sudden, as soon as the train enters Prussia, with its clean looking villages and farms, its gardens, and its paved roads; and the sense of contrast grows stronger and stronger as one penetrates further into Germany. Even dull Berlin seemed animated, after our Russian towns.

And the contrast of climate! Two days before, I had left St. Petersburg thickly covered with snow, and now, in middle Germany, I walked without an overcoat along the railway platform, in warm sunshine, admiring the budding flowers. Then came the Rhine, and further on Switzerland bathed in the rays of a bright sun, with its small, clean hotels, where breakfast was served out of doors, in view of the snow-clad mountains. I never before had realized so vividly what Russia’s northern position meant, and how the history of the Russian nation had been influenced by the fact that the main centre of its life had to develop in high latitudes, as far north as the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Only then I fully understood the uncontrollable attraction which southern lands have exercised on the Russians, the colossal efforts which they have made to reach the Black Sea, and the steady pressure of the Siberian colonists southward, further into Manchuria.

At that time Zürich was full of Russian students, both women and men. The famous Oberstrass, near the Polytechnic, was a corner of Russia, where the Russian language prevailed over all others. The students lived as most Russian students do, especially the women; that is, upon very little. Tea and bread, some milk, and a thin slice of meat cooked over a spirit lamp, amidst animated discussions of the latest news from the socialistic world or the last book read⁠—that was their regular fare. Those who had more money than was needed for such a mode of living gave it for the common cause⁠—the library, the Russian review which was going to be published, the support of the Swiss labor papers. As to their dress, the most parsimonious economy reigned in that direction. Pushkin has written in a well-known verse, “What hat may not suit a girl of sixteen?” Our girls at Zürich seemed defiantly to throw this question at the population of the old Zwinglian city: “Can there be a simplicity in dress which does not become a girl, when she is young, intelligent, and full of energy?”

With all this, the busy little community worked harder than any other students have ever worked since there were universities in existence, and the Zürich professors were never tired of showing the progress accomplished by the women at the university, as an example to the male students.

For many years I had longed to learn all about the International Workingmen’s Association. Russian papers mentioned it pretty frequently in their columns, but they were not allowed to speak of its principles or of what it was doing. I felt that it must be a great movement, full of consequences, but I could not grasp its aims and tendencies. Now that I was in Switzerland, I determined to satisfy my longings.

The association was then at the height of its development. Great hopes had been awakened in the years 1840⁠–⁠48 in the hearts of European workers. Only now we begin to realize what a formidable amount of socialist literature was circulated in those years by socialists of all denominations⁠—Christian socialists, state socialists, Fourierists, Saint-Simonists, Owenites, and so on; and only now we begin to understand the depth of this movement, as we discover how much of what our generation has considered the product of contemporary thought was already developed and said⁠—often with great penetration⁠—during those years. The republicans understood then under the name of “republic” a quite different thing from the democratic organization of capitalist rule which now goes under that name. When they spoke of the United States of Europe, they understood the brotherhood of workers, the weapons of war transformed into tools, and those tools used by all members of society for the benefit of all⁠—“the iron returned to the laborer,” as Pierre Dupont said in one of his songs. They meant not only the reign of equality as regards criminal law and political rights, but particularly economic equality. The nationalists themselves saw in their dreams Young Italy, Young Germany, and Young Hungary taking the lead in far-reaching agrarian and economic reforms.

The defeat of the June insurrection at Paris, of Hungary by the armies of Nicholas I, and of Italy by the French and the Austrians, and the fearful reaction, political and intellectual, which followed everywhere in Europe, totally destroyed that movement. Its literature, its achievements, its very principles of economic revolution and universal brotherhood, were simply forgotten, lost, during the next twenty years.

However, one idea had survived⁠—the idea of an international brotherhood of all workers, which a few French emigrants continued to preach in the United States, and the followers of Robert Owen in England. The understanding which was reached by some English workers and a few French workers’ delegates to the London International Exhibition of 1862 became the starting-point for a formidable movement, which soon spread all over Europe, and included several million workers. The hopes which had been dormant for twenty years were awakened once more, when the workers were called upon to unite, “without distinction of creed, sex, nationality, race, or color,” to proclaim that “the emancipation of the workers must be their own work,” and to throw the weight of a strong, united, international organization into the evolution of mankind⁠—not in the name of love and charity, but in the name of justice, of the force that belongs to a body of men moved by a reasoned consciousness of their own aims and aspirations.

Two strikes at Paris, in 1868 and 1869, more or less helped by small contributions sent from abroad, especially from England, insignificant though they were in themselves, and the prosecutions which the French imperial government directed against the International, became the origin of an immense movement in which the solidarity of the workers of all nations was proclaimed in the face of the rivalries of the states. The idea of an international union of all trades, and of a struggle against capital with the aid of international support, carried away the most indifferent of the workers. The movement spread like wildfire in France, Italy, and Spain, bringing to the front a great number of intelligent, active, and devoted workers, and attracting to it a few decidedly superior men and women from the wealthier educated classes. A force, never before suspected to exist, grew stronger every day in Europe; and if the movement had not been arrested in its growth by the Franco-German war, great things would probably have happened in Europe, deeply modifying the aspects of our civilization, and undoubtedly accelerating human progress; but the crushing victory of the Germans brought about abnormal conditions; it stopped for a quarter of a century the normal development of France, and threw all Europe into the period of militarism in which we are living at the present time.

All sorts of partial solutions of the great social question had currency at that time among the workers: cooperation, productive associations supported by the state, people’s banks, gratuitous credit, and so on. Each of these solutions was brought before the “sections” of the association, and then before the local, regional, national, and international congresses, and eagerly discussed. Every annual congress of the association marked a new step in advance, in the development of ideas about the great social problem which stands before our generation and calls for a solution. The amount of intelligent things which were said at these congresses, and of scientifically correct, deeply thought over ideas which were circulated⁠—all being the results of the collective thought of the workers⁠—has never yet been sufficiently appreciated; but there is no exaggeration in saying that all schemes of social reconstruction which are now in vogue under the name of “scientific socialism” or “anarchism” had their origin in the discussions and reports of the different congresses of the International Association. The few educated men who joined the movement have only put into a theoretical shape the criticisms and the aspirations which were expressed in the sections, and subsequently in the congresses, by the workers themselves.

The war of 1870⁠–⁠71 had hampered the development of the association, but had not stopped it. In all the industrial centres of Switzerland numerous and animated sections of the International existed, and thousands of workers flocked to their meetings, at which war was declared upon the existing system of private ownership of land and factories, and the near end of the capitalist system was proclaimed. Local congresses were held in various parts of the country, and at each of these gatherings the most arduous and difficult problems of the present social organization were discussed, with a knowledge of the matter and a depth of conception which alarmed the middle classes even more than did the numbers of adherents who joined the sections, or groups, of the International. The jealousies and prejudices which had hitherto existed in Switzerland between the privileged trades (the watchmakers and the jewelers) and the rougher trades (weavers, and so on), and which had prevented joint action in labor disputes, were disappearing. The workers asserted with increasing emphasis that, of all the divisions which exist in modern society, by far the most important is that between the owners of capital and those who come into the world penniless, and are doomed to remain producers of wealth for the favored few.

Italy, especially middle and northern Italy, was honeycombed with groups and sections of the International; and in these the Italian unity so long struggled for was declared a mere illusion. The workers were called upon to make their own revolution⁠—to take the land for the peasants and the factories for the workers themselves, and to abolish the oppressive centralized organization of the state, whose historical mission always was to protect and to maintain the exploitation of man by man.

In Spain, similar organizations covered Catalonia, Valencia, and Andalusia; they were supported by, and united with, the powerful labor unions of Barcelona, which had already introduced the eight hours’ day in the building trades. The International had no less than eighty thousand regularly paying Spanish members; it embodied all the active and thinking elements of the population; and by its distinct refusal to meddle with the political intrigues during 1871⁠–⁠72 it had drawn to itself in a very high degree the sympathies of the masses. The proceedings of its provincial and national congresses, and the manifestos which they issued, were models of a severe logical criticism of the existing conditions, as well as admirably lucid statements of the workers’ ideals.

In Belgium, Holland, and even in Portugal, the same movement was spreading, and it had already brought into the association the great mass and the best elements of the Belgian coal miners and weavers. In England, the always conservative trade unions had also joined the movement, at least in principle, and, without committing themselves to socialism, were ready to support their Continental brethren in direct struggles against capital, especially in strikes. In Germany, the socialists had concluded a union with the rather numerous followers of La Salle, and the first foundations of a social democratic party had been laid. Austria and Hungary followed in the same track; and although no international organization was possible at that time in France, after the defeat of the Commune and the reaction which followed (Draconic laws having been enacted against the adherents of the association), everyone was persuaded, nevertheless, that this period of reaction would not last, and that France would soon join the association again and take the lead in it.

When I came to Zürich, I joined one of the local sections of the International Workingmen’s Association. I also asked my Russian friends where I could learn more about the great movement which was going on in other countries. “Read,” was their reply, and my sister-in-law, who was then studying at Zürich, brought me large numbers of books and collections of newspapers for the last two years. I spent days and nights in reading, and received a deep impression which nothing will efface; the flood of new thoughts awakened is associated in my mind with a tiny clean room in the Oberstrass, commanding from a window a view of the blue lake, with the mountains beyond it, where the Swiss fought for their independence, and the high spires of the old town⁠—that scene of so many religious struggles.

Socialistic literature has never been rich in books. It is written for workers, for whom one penny is money, and its main force lies in its small pamphlets and its newspapers. Moreover, he who seeks for information about socialism finds in books little of what he requires most. They contain the theories or the scientific arguments in favor of socialist aspirations, but they give no idea how the workers accept socialist ideals, and how the latter could be put into practice. There remains nothing but to take collections of papers and read them all through⁠—the news as well as the leading articles, the former perhaps even more than the latter. Quite a new world of social relations and methods of thought and action is revealed by this reading, which gives an insight into what cannot be found anywhere else⁠—namely, the depth and the moral force of the movement, the degree to which men are imbued with the new theories, their readiness to carry them out in their daily life and to suffer for them. All discussions about the impracticability of socialism and the necessary slowness of evolution are of little value, because the speed of evolution can only be judged from a close knowledge of the human beings of whose evolution we are speaking. What estimate of a sum can be made without knowing its components?

The more I read, the more I saw that there was before me a new world, unknown to me, and totally unknown to the learned makers of sociological theories⁠—a world that I could know only by living in the Workingmen’s Association and by meeting the workers in their everyday life. I decided, accordingly, to spend a couple of months in such a life. My Russian friends encouraged me, and after a few days’ stay at Zürich I left for Geneva, which was then a great centre of the international movement.

The place where the Geneva sections used to meet was the spacious Masonic Temple Unique. More than two thousand men could come together in its large hall, at the general meetings, while every evening all sorts of committee and section meetings took place in the side rooms, or classes in history, physics, engineering, and so on were held. Free instruction was given there to the workers by the few, very few, middle-class men who had joined the movement, mainly French refugees of the Paris Commune. It was a people’s university as well as a people’s forum.